Mayor Dellums is right. To avoid laying off 203 police officers, the
Oakland City Council needs to threaten to lay off 140.

Last week, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums threatened to lay off
140 cops as part of an effort to close an $83 million budget gap. The
idea of cutting that many police positions in a crime-ridden city like
Oakland seems unthinkable, even if violent crime is down more than 15
percent this year. But a closer look at the mayor's plan reveals that
it makes sense — as strange as that may sound. In fact, the city
council is scheduled to take up the mayor's proposal this week, and if
there was ever a time for local politicians to stand behind Dellums,
it's now.

The reason is simple. If the council overrules the mayor and takes
the police layoff plan off the table, it will jeopardize a $67 million,
three-year federal grant. In fact, without the layoff plan, the city
has virtually no shot at getting the grant. And without it, Oakland
will have to gut services across the board. Indeed, it could even lead
to the layoff of 203 total police officers, not 140, because of Measure
Y, the city's badly written community policing initiative. "If we don't
get those federal funds, we're going to have to make major cuts —
there's just no other way to look at it," City Administrator Dan
Lindheim said in an interview last week. "There's no way in hell,
with the revenues that we have, can we fund the services we're
providing."

The importance of the federal grant, and thus the cop layoff plan,
cannot be overstated. For the city to qualify for the grant, it must be
officially planning to lay off police officers. The grant comes from
President Barack Obama's stimulus package, and it's supposed to
create or save cops' jobs. In other words, no layoff plan, no
grant.

Under Dellums' budget proposal, the grant would pay for the 140
police officers — a little more than $22 million a year for three
years. After that, the city would have to find money from its general
fund to pay for the officers. City officials hope the economy will
rebound by then, and the city will no longer be in such dire financial
condition. In the meantime, the grant will allow the city to avoid an
additional $22 million in cuts on top of the $57 million that Dellums
already has planned to slash from the budget.

To obtain the grant, city officials are counting on Dellums'
connections in Washington, DC, and his ability to lobby Attorney
General Eric Holder, whose office oversees the grant. The former
longtime congressman knows Holder from when he served in the Department
of Justice under Bill Clinton — another Dellums ally.
Oakland City Councilwoman Jean Quan said Dellums has been in
close contact with Holder concerning the grant. Dellums was elected
mayor of Oakland in part because of hopes that his connections would
lead to more federal funds for the city. Perhaps he can finally
deliver.

The feds also should take Oakland's grant request seriously because
of the city's high crime rate — it was ranked as the
fifth-most-dangerous city in the nation last year by CQ
(Congressional Quarterly) based on 2007 violent crime stats.
Oakland also has far fewer police officers per capita than most other
large cities, along with high poverty rates. In short, Oakland may need
this grant more than any other city in America.

Nonetheless, the city's chance of getting it will surely be scuttled
if the council turns its back on the mayor's cop layoff plan. It will
be tempting, because the mayor's proposal promises to be wildly
unpopular. After all, one of Dellums' few achievements since taking
office more than two years ago was finally bringing the city's police
force up to its authorized strength of 802 last year, something that
Jerry Brown never attained. Last Friday, San Francisco
Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson echoed what is likely a
widespread sentiment in Oakland when he came out against the cop layoff
plan and wrote that he would rather close down city government one day
a week than "lose a single police officer on the street."

That's an understandable position, but if the council adopts it,
then the city's financial problems could be devastating. To understand
why requires a quick look at how the city budget works. The $414
million general fund budget, which is where the $83 million deficit
lies, is taken up almost entirely by police, fire, and debt service the
city is obligated to pay. In fact, according to the mayor's budget,
police will cost the general fund about $198 million this year, while
the fire department costs about $104 million, and the annual debt
service amounts to about $45 million (the biggest ticket item there
being the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum — thanks again Don
Perata, for that great Raiders' deal). So that's $347 million for
just three items, which leaves only $67 million for nearly everything
else city government does.

In other words, the city will have one helluva time balancing the
budget without major cuts to the police and fire departments —
unless Oakland gets that federal grant. It's true that the mayor and
the council need to push harder on cutting employee salaries. But the
grant is essential, because if the city really does have to lay off
police officers, it will be devastating.

The problem is Measure Y. The voter-approved parcel tax requires
that the city maintain an authorized police force of at least 739 cops
before it's allowed to collect the $20 million in revenues that Measure
Y generates each year. Of the $20 million, about $9 million goes to the
police department to pay for 63 community policing officers.

But Measure Y's minimum staffing requirement means that if the city
were to lay off 140 officers, it would actually cost the city 203 cops.
Here's why. Only 739 officers are currently paid from the general fund.
Measure Y pays for the other 63. So to balance the general fund, the
city would have to do the layoffs from the 739 officers. But once it
does that, then it can no longer collect the Measure Y parcel tax,
meaning that it will also have to eliminate the 63 community policing
officers. So a layoff of 140 officers from the general fund actually
results in the loss of 203 cops. In other words, Oakland, a city mired
in crime, could lose up to one-quarter of its police force. (Measure Y
and an agreement with the firefighters' union create similar
impediments to layoffs in the fire department.)